Critical reflection

Critical reflection Order Description   Critical reflection Assessment information says: • Identify one aspect of this unit's content that has challenged your thinking about children, child abuse or child protection. Your assignment must: 1. Describe the issue and why you found it interesting, challenging or provoking (reflective writing; approximately 250 words) 2. Provide an overview of readings/literature that have been helpful in developing (or redeveloping) your understanding of this issue (approximately 750 words) 3. Explore how critical issues of power and social arrangements are reflected in this issue and options for a different response (approximately 500 words). • It is appropriate to use first person writing for the reflective content. It is necessary to use relevant academic literature for the later sections. • The assignment can be presented as an essay or presented using these three subheadings: 1. describing the issue 2. overview using readings/literature 3. critical issues and responses. Part 1: • The reflection describes a particular idea or topic from the unit – for example, sibling contact in out-of-home care or the experience of parents with disabilities in child protection systems or children’s participation. • Includes what you found provoking or challenging about this topic or issue. • It is most effective if this is linked to an experience; an in-class activity or video is a suitable experience for this purpose, or something from life outside of uni – work, for example. Part 2 – describing the issue • This section uses recognised academic literature and reputable publications/reports (for example the Create Foundation report by McDowall, not newspapers) to provide a general overview of the topic you have chosen. • That is, what does the academic literature say about your topic? Part 3 – critical issues • This section draws on the kinds of thinking that were used in lecture and tutorial 4 about social relations in child abuse. • It asks you to think about whether the topic you chose reflects issues of power such as silencing, over- representation, disempowerment or marginalisation. • Following that you write about what things could be done differently that might lead to a different outcome/result. • For this final section your suggestions should link to evidence about better practice as well as the points raised in Part 2. • Style • • In tone and style the readings by Bessar band Crawford; Lansdown; Head; McConnell & Sigurjonsdottir are similar to what this assignment is asking for. • • these readings explore a particular topic (as opposed to presenting research findings like Keddell, or Higgins et al, do), discuss issues of power and social arrangements and include ways to respond to the problems. • • A key difference is that this assignment starts with reflective writing to set your direction.